Back to the Moon-ARC

“How is Dr. Xu?”

Stetson looked toward Tony and Xu. Though he was obviously in pain, Xu gave a thumbs-up sign. Tony, after only a brief moment of hesitation, also gave a thumbs-up.

“He’ll make it.”

“Glad to hear it.” The mission controller then hesitated before he said, “Bill, there’s another problem you need to know about. The hole that you patched probably pierced the heat shield. The patch you put in place will keep you from losing atmosphere, but it will never survive the heat of reentry. Our models indicate that the hole on the outside of the ship is probably two or three times larger than what you see on the inside. The energy of the bullet was mostly deposited in the outer skin. If you don’t patch it on the outside with the heat-shield repair kit, then you might not survive the aerocapture.”

“EVA?” Stetson said.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to. Are you up for it?”

“Well, I am certainly okay with going out, but I am not sure about what to do with the rest of my crew. Their suits are a mess. It’ll take us some time to clean them for reuse. How much time do I have before we have to jettison the lander and begin reentry procedures?” The lander was not designed to return home to Earth. Before the Orion made its final entry into the Earth’s atmosphere for the upcoming aerocapture maneuver, the lander would have to be jettisoned. The big kicker would be if they had time to get in their suits and to complete an EVA before the aerocapture procedures began.

“Six hours.”

Not much time, Stetson thought. Then he replied, “That’s plenty of time. Stetson out.”

“Okay, folks, we’ve got to get suited up quickly. I’ve got to go outside and play.”

“You have another patch kit?” Hui asked.

“Yes. After the Columbia accident back in 2003, NASA developed a technique for patching damage to the shuttle’s heat shields so that similar accidents could be prevented. The requirement applied to the Orion as well—here we are. The heat-shield patch kit is stored near the one I just used. Without it, that hole will allow hot gases inside the ship and act like a blowtorch. We would never survive that.”

It took twenty minutes to get the injured Dr. Xu into his suit. Another thirty-five to get the unconscious pilot back into his suit. At first Zhi acted as if he were going to refuse to put his suit on, so Hui asked Stetson to hold the pistol on him while she and Tony supervised his suiting up. They then proceeded to duct tape him back down. That took another thirty minutes.

Chow opened up a secure radio channel to Stetson. “Bill, can we repressurize the Orion while you are on the EVA so I can have access to my patients? If one of them were to need attention, I’d like to be able to get to them quickly.”

“I don’t see why not. That way you can monitor the ship and run through the checklists again also. We know the damage that was caused by one of the bullets, but not the other two. I’d rather find out now than during aerocapture. How is Dr. Xu, really?”

“He’s lost a lot of blood, and the bullet severed his fibula—one of the bones in the lower leg. He’s stable but in a lot of pain. He should be okay if we can get him to a hospital soon. Putting him back in the suit was very painful for him. I gave him some morphine.”

“Okay, we’ve got just a little more than five hours to fix the ship, get back in, and get ready for aerocapture,” Stetson said. “Everybody has masks down and is ready for depressurization. Then Hui and I go outside and look for the damage on the ship. Once we find the damage, she comes back inside while I do the repair. It’s a one-person job anyway. While I’m outside, you repressurize the cabin. When I want back in, you do it all again in reverse order. That’s the plan. Got it?”

“Got it, Bill.” Tony nodded.

Hui would look at the top portion of the ship while Bill looked at the underside. Stetson communicated over the suit radio to Hui.

“Captain Hui. I won’t ask why one of your crew had a gun. Quite frankly, I don’t care. But I do want to know if I need to worry about anything else from you and your crew that might endanger me, my crew, or my ship.”

“Commander Stetson, please know that I am so sorry about what happened. I knew that Zhi had a gun with him on the trip. He was our—how do you say—political officer. But I did not know he had brought it with him from the lander to your ship. I believe we might have used it on ourselves had your ship not come to our rescue.”

Stetson looked around the empty Altair and out the hole in her side. He could see the constellation Orion as plain as he ever had. That’s fitting, he thought. “I never imagined my trip to the Moon would be anything like this.”

“Nor did I.”

“It’ll go in the history books.” Stetson could see the concern and slight smile on Hui’s face.

“In ours, too.”

Chapter 28

“I have completely covered the upper portion of the ship’s hull and found no other holes,” Hui radioed to Stetson. “I am not sure where those other bullets went, but they did not penetrate the hull on the upper half.”

“That’s good news,” Bill replied. He had worked his way around the bottom half of the Orion twice and had found only the one major hole that he had already patched from the inside. “Something on the inside must’ve stopped the bullets, then. One of them likely being Dr. Xu’s leg.”

“Yes, you are most likely correct on that one,” Hui agreed. “I can work my way down to you and offer a hand.”

The damage assessment done, Hui offered once again to stay outside and help, but Bill patted the kit attached to his side and smiled.